The Judaizing Calvin: Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms

Since David C. Steinmetz’s hallmark essay “The Superiority of
Pre-Critical Exegesis,” the importance of the history of exegesis has
been rediscovered and revitalized in both medieval and Reformation
scholarship.1 Particularly in the area of Reformation research, works
from such scholars as John Thompson, Susan Schreiner, Timothy
Wengert, Craig Farmer, Barbara Pitkin, Irena Backus, Mickey Mattox,
Beth Kreitzer, and Raymond Blacketer have provided careful and
splendid studies of the significance of biblical exegesis in the theology
and work of the Protestant reformers.2 Other significant volumes of
compiled essays on this topic have also contributed to the ongoing
understanding of the importance of sixteenth-century biblical
interpretation for the processes of reform, confessional formation,
and shifts in the practices of reading and preaching Scripture.3
John Calvin’s exegesis, in particular, has been the subject of
several important books and articles, both among historians of the
sixteenth-century and even among modern theologians and biblical
scholars.4 Although some modern scholars like Hans Frei recognize,
affirm, and exalt Calvin’s premodern presuppositions and practices,
others such as Frederic Farrar and Philip Schaff have found in him the
precursor to principles of modern historical criticism.5 This book
offers a very concentrated and, I think, very interesting piece of this
puzzle of Calvin’s role and place in the history of biblical exegesis; for
by contextualizing Calvin’s exegesis of a particular set of Psalms
within his larger sixteenth-century setting, one can discover many of

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